Looks like it was another gfreat VHRA Show, seems the only thing missing was model cars, so I'm sorry I had to be somewhere else and missed it.

08:00am my first morning in Detroit. Doesn't look too good and strong wind with minus 52 degree F wind-chill, made it unsafe.

It was so cold any exposed skin starts to burn almost instantly, I know this because I thought the hotel concierge was pulling my leg when he said i shouldn't go outside. The skin beneath six layers of clothing takes a few seconds more before it too starts to burn.The beard also proved problematic when exposed, as the snowflakes get stuck in it and the whole shebang freezes, not very nice. Same happens to your lips and any other exposed and/or moist surfaces of the body, they just freeze and crack apart. Take your gloves off for a few seconds and the skin on the back of your hands dries out and cracks up too. Another word for snow is 'humidity', AKA water, in this case, frozen water, which doesn’t mix well with electric powered things. However, my bride did equip me with special hand warming devices that she got from a ski shop. They look like silicon breast implants (yup, much better than pocket billiards ) with a strip of metal floating in the solution. Bend/crack the metal and the chemical reaction causes the solution in the bags to get nice and warm, so the gloves can come off and your fingers are nice and happy so long as one keeps one’s hands in one’s pockets, or for about an hour.

The concierge wasn't kidding, 8 people froze to death this day in Detroit. In fact the papers/TV News reported many deaths each day we were there, very sad. There’s so many homeless people in Detroit that it’s become an extremely scary place. Worse than New York or Chicago ever were, because these folks are not just homeless, they are angry because of how they became so and if you wander into the wrong part of town, they won’t just mug you, many will kill you for your wallet and any other possessions you have on you. Many houses in what look like affluent middle class neighbourhoods are boarded up, likewise many buildings in the downtown area are empty. I would have loved to visit some of the old car factories and related buildings/landmarks, but it’s so dangerous in those neighbourhoods you cannot get a taxi or limo driver to take you there. We even got ticked off for crossing the road out front of Cobo Hall (in the heart of downtown precinct) to have lunch in a little café that looked like it offered better food than the junk style stuff at the motor show. The cop told us that dressed in business suits as we were, we may as well have just painted a target on our foreheads. I figured we were OK by way of safety in numbers, guess I’ll think twice next time.

Below pic is same day as the one above but now 11:00am, much better conditions, so time to venture outside and head for the Henry Ford MuseumSo how did we get away from the extreme cold of Detroit? Driving north to Toronto in Canada seemed like a good idea at the time.Yeah, let's go where it's even colder! So cold it was, that water froze in fire hydrants and a couple of houses burned to the ground whilst firefighters used large butane torches to try and get it flowing.Parking was a snap, moving on required a shovel.But I did prove once and for all that I really can walk on water, by strolling across the surface of this is normally fast flowing river (Note: I'm standing in the middle to take the photograph).After a week in Toronto I headed towards St Louis, where the air eventually got warm enough that we could venture outside and do stuff. Getting there was an adventure of mammoth scale, five aircraft across two airlines, three airports and four trips through US Customs & Immigration.

This was the ambient temperature in St Louis on the same day it reached 106 in Melbourne.The next day it dropped below 20….. and that was after the sun came out!.

I will never again complain about the cold in Melbourne on a winters day, EVER!The good news is, I did manage to take in a small hot rod show over the Australia Day weekend, but rather than completely hijacking Fred's thread, I'll post some pics in a new thread if anybody would like to see them.

Last edited by Carps on Fri 31 Jan 2014, 5:07 pm; edited 5 times in total